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Democrats cave in on torture
Key senators back attorney general nominee
By Bill Van Auken
11/04/07 "WSW" -- -- Two key Democratic members of the Senate
Judiciary Committee announced Friday afternoon that they will
support the Bush administration’s nominee for attorney general,
former federal judge Michael Mukasey, virtually assuring his
confirmation as head of the US Justice Department.
Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who originally proposed
Mukasey for the post, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California
said that they would vote in favor of the nominee. With the
judiciary panel split 10-9 between the Democrats and
Republicans—with all nine Republicans already committed to
backing Mukasey—this assures that the nomination will go to the
full Senate. As many as 20 Democrats are expected to back the
nomination, giving a comfortable 70 votes for confirmation.
Schumer declared that Mukasey was not his “ideal choice,” but
praised his “integrity and independence.” Feinstein declared,
“He is not Alberto Gonzales,” who left the Justice Department in
the face of the mounting scandal over the politically motivated
firing of US attorneys.
Another Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Russ
Feingold of Wisconsin, also indicated he may vote for Mukasey.
Calling him a “marked improvement” over Gonzales, Feingold told
the New York Times, “He may be the best nominee we can get from
this administration.”
The rallying of crucial Democratic support for Mukasey has taken
place in the context of a deepening controversy over the
nominee’s refusal to declare illegal the US government’s blatant
use of torture against those it has illegally detained around
the globe.
Leading to an explicit defense of torture on the part of the
administration and its supporters, the entire debate has served
to expose the terminal decay of basic democratic processes and
principles within the United States under the combined impact of
colonial war abroad and the staggering growth of social
inequality at home.
At the center of debate is the steadfast refusal of Mukasey to
respond directly or truthfully to questions from the Senate
Judiciary Committee on whether waterboarding—the brutal and
agonizing practice utilized by the CIA, in which victims are
strapped to boards and water is poured over a cloth covering the
mouth while they slowly suffocate—constitutes illegal torture.
Bush spoke in support of Mukasey again Friday while in South
Carolina for a campaign fundraiser for Senator Lindsey Graham, a
leading Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I strongly urge the United States Senate to confirm this man,
so that I can have an attorney general to work with to protect
the United States of America from further attack,” said Bush.
The wording was significant in that it posed the paramount
function of the US attorney general as that of the president’s
enforcer in the so-called war on terrorism. Upholding the
Constitution, protecting the democratic rights of the people or
enforcing the laws of the land as well as international law are
all regarded as superfluous in comparison to this
all-encompassing crusade in which all methods are valid,
including wars of aggression, illegal detention, waterboarding
and other forms of torture.
Meanwhile, one of the leading Republican presidential
candidates, Fred Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee,
weighed in on the debate over Mukasey, indicating that as
president he would support waterboarding in the name of national
security. “I’ve always thought that when you get right down to
it, the measures have to meet the situation,” he said, after
being asked if he would oppose the torture method.
Bush also received support for the Mukasey nomination from two
of the most prominent newspapers in the country Friday.
In its lead editorial, the Washington Post lamented that “Mr.
Mukasey is being judged not on his merits but as a proxy for
Bush.” The editorial continued, “Yet critics of the nomination,
while understandably disturbed by Mr. Mukasey’s unwillingness to
label waterboarding illegal, may be working against the last,
best hope to see the rule of law reemerge in this
administration.”
The distinction made by the Post between the criminality of the
Bush administration and Mukasey’s stonewalling during his Senate
testimony is nonsensical. The nominee’s “unwillingness to label
waterboarding illegal” has only one motive. He knows full well
that this practice is a violation of both national law and
international treaties barring torture and he is well aware that
Bush, Cheney, the CIA and the entire administration are
criminally responsible for its use by American interrogators.
By dodging the question, Mukasey is protecting this criminality
and making it clear that, like his predecessors, he will serve
as a defender of the illegal acts of the White House. So much
for the Post’s claim that he represents the “last, best hope”
for restoring the rule of law.
In feigning an even-handed approach, the Post goes on to suggest
that, instead of barring Mukasey’s nomination, the Senate should
“do something which, for all the rhetoric, they have so far
declined to do: ban torture.” Specifically, it called for the
body to support a measure introduced by Senator Joseph Biden, a
Delaware Democrat, requiring all US personnel, including the
CIA, to limit themselves to interrogation methods approved in
the US Army Field Manual. The document bans waterboarding, which
has been recognized by the American military as a form of
torture for more than a century.
From a legal standpoint, this is nonsense. The US Senate has
passed bans on torture over and over again by ratifying the
Geneva Conventions and Conventions against Torture, all of which
make waterboarding an international war crime. There is more
than enough legal authority to bring war crimes charges against
Bush administration officials.
From a political standpoint, the Post points to the two-faced
character of the Democratic opposition to torture. The Democrats
will make noises in the Senate when they think it serves their
political advantage. But they have refused to enact an explicit
ban on waterboarding by the CIA, for fear of charges that they
are “soft on terrorism.”
The Democrats also fear a constitutional confrontation with the
White House. Both the administration and its nominee Mukasey
have made it clear that they do not believe that the president
is bound by such laws to the extent that they infringe upon his
limitless power as commander in chief under conditions of an
unending war against terrorism.
Also weighing in on the Mukasey nomination Friday was the Wall
Street Journal in an editorial entitled “Mukasey and the
Democrats.” The Journal, whose editorial positions generally
reflect the outlook of the extreme right-wing clique that
determines the policies of the Bush administration, not
surprisingly defended not only the nominee but torture itself.
The editorial finds it incredible that Mukasey’s nomination has
been placed in doubt when his only “supposed offense is that he
has refused to declare ‘illegal’ a single interrogation
technique that the CIA has used on rare occasions against mass
murderers.” In plainer words, what’s all the fuss about a little
torture against people who had it coming any way?
The Journal defended Mukasey’s refusal to state an opinion on
waterboarding based on “hypothetical facts and circumstances,”
on the grounds that he had not yet been briefed on “the
classified interrogation details.” This was the same argument
made by Bush the day before.
The “classified interrogation details” cannot add much to the
public record. Waterboarding has been around since the Spanish
Inquisition. Known at various times as the “water cure” or
“Chinese water torture,” it has always been recognized as a
means of torture. In 1902, an American officer was
court-martialed for inflicting it upon insurgents in the
Philippines. After World War II, Japanese military personnel
were prosecuted for war crimes for using it against POWs.
Even the present-day US State Department denounces the practice
as torture when it is used by other countries. When American
personnel carry it out, however, it is defended as an “enhanced
interrogation technique”—the same euphemism employed by the
Nazis—that is indispensable in the war on terror.
Mukasey’s evasion of the question means only that he will
continue the practice of his predecessors of defending torture
and protecting the chief torturers in the White House. And that
is fine with the Journal.
“What’s really at stake here is whether US officials are going
to have the basic tools required to extract information from
America’s enemies,” the paper declares. It continues: “As for
waterboarding, it is mostly a political sideshow. The CIA’s view
seems to be that some version of waterboarding is effective in
breaking especially tough cases quickly.”
The Gestapo, it might be added, was of the same opinion. While
the scale of the latter’s use of these methods was no doubt
greater than that of the American intelligence agencies, the
underlying contempt for international law, democratic rights and
human dignity are much the same.
In concluding its editorial, the Journal makes the
partisan—though legitimate—point that the Democrats’ outrage
over Mukasey’s position on waterboarding is largely cynical.
It quotes a Democratic senator at a 2004 hearing: “I think there
are probably very few people in this room or in America who
would say that torture should never ever be used, particularly
if thousands of lives are at stake.... It is easy to sit back in
the armchair and say that torture can never be used, but when
you are in the foxhole it is a very different deal. And I
respect, I think we all respect the fact that the President is
in the foxhole every day.”
The editorial identifies the senator as “New York Democrat Chuck
Schumer, who recommended Judge Mukasey for Attorney General in
the first place.”
Before announcing late Friday his decision to vote in favor of
Mukasey, Schumer had maintained a studied silence on the
nomination since the Senate confirmation hearings. On Friday,
however, the New York Times quoted him as saying: “No nominee
from this administration will agree with us on things like
torture and wiretapping. The best we can expect is somebody who
will depoliticize the Justice Department and put rule of law
first, even when pressured by the administration. If Mukasey is
that type of person, I’ll support him.”
How an attorney general can “put the law first” while defending
torture and illegal wiretapping, the senior senator from New
York did not bother to explain.
Going by their record the Democrats are virtually certain to let
Mukasey’s nomination pass, while allowing all those for whom it
is politically expedient—including the party’s presidential
nominees—to vote against it. Such was the path taken in 2004
when the Democrats refused to filibuster the nomination of
Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, even though it was known
that he played a leading role in drafting the memos providing a
pseudo-legal justification for torture.
The debate, in the end, has only served to expose once again the
full complicity of the Democratic Party in the wholesale attacks
on democratic rights carried out over the past six years,
including the legitimization of torture.
It bears noting that, in focusing the debate on waterboarding,
the Democrats have deliberately obscured other fundamental
questions posed in Mukasey’s testimony. The nominee voiced his
agreement with the position that the president as
commander-in-chief has the inherent constitutional power to
override the law in the name of national security.
It is this reactionary conception that underlies not only
Mukasey’s backhanded defense of torture, but also his upholding
of the legality of the National Security Agency’s domestic
wiretapping program. Of course, on the latter issue, the
Democratic-led Congress has already largely bowed to the demands
of the White House for warrantless surveillance.
When pressed in the nomination hearing about his view that the
president’s executive powers allowed him to override the law,
the nominee answered: “We are not dealing here with black and
white. Which is why it’s very important that push not come to
shove, because the result could be not just divisive but
disaster.”
None of the senators bothered to ask what kind of disaster
Mukasey had in mind. The most obvious answer would be the
imposition of an outright dictatorship.
Such are the ugly truths about the profound moral and political
rot of the American ruling establishment that have been laid
bare by the Mukasey nomination process.
Engaged in dirty wars of aggression and pursuing a predatory
policy of colonial conquest in the Middle East and Central Asia,
the American ruling elite has embraced torture as an instrument
of policy. This has found its hideous expression in Abu Ghraib
and in the secret prisons of the CIA around the globe.
Military aggression abroad is ultimately incompatible with
democracy at home. That the criminal practice of torture is now
openly defended in public debate in the US itself is a warning
that America’s ruling financial oligarchy is prepared to
jettison the last vestiges of democratic rights and employ these
same methods at home in order to keep hold of its power and
wealth.
Copyright 1998-2007 World Socialist Web Site
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